Blahface

According to the Deuteronomy 22:28-29:

I hear a lot about how this verse says that a women must marry her rapist. I don't think it is clear that it actually means that. To me it sounds more like they just got caught fucking.

Here is a video, that refutes the claim that it is referring to rape. The guy seems to be a homophobic asshole, but I think he makes a good case.

jakejonesiv

There are about 1,000 things in the Old Testament that are totally insane from today's more enlightened perspective. I read an interesting study (can't remember where ) that demonstrated that exegisis of the Bible follows after the changing mores of society. In other words, even true believers don't get their values from reading the Bible, they merely change the way the Bible is interpreted to reflect what they deem acceptable.

A famous example is the way southern preachers defended slavery from the Bible before and during the American Civil war.

And what about the current day? Modern conservative Christians hoot and holler about abortion so much that you would think that it is embossed on every page of their KJV Bibles. Yet, the few actual references to the unborn indicate that killing them is perfectly acceptable if they are progeny of your enemies.

Jake

BMD

I think you have to read it in context. Verses 23 through 29 describe three different scenarios. One with an engaged woman in the city, one with an engaged woman in the country and one with a woman who is neither engaged or married. To me and others, this reads as what do you do for the same act in these three situations.

The second one is the only one that specifies rape, in verse 25. The second situation also mentions in verse 27 that for a woman in the country, it is not her fault if no one hears her scream. Now if all three of these situations are not to be about rape, then it becomes perplexing why one would write down a rule for an engaged woman caught having sex in the city and a rule for an unengaged woman caught having sex and interrupt this with a rule about a raped woman in the country.

If you go back to the first case, there is some parallel language that indicates that it is rape as well. In verse 24, we see that the woman in the city is to be killed if her screams are not heard, whereas in the country it is not her fault if she is not heard. The implication being that if the woman in the city does not scream loudly enough to be caught in the act, we can't know for sure if it was consensual or not so we kill her just in case.

Now, for the final case. We have just read in verses 13 through 21 that if a woman is found to not be a virgin on her wedding night, she is to be stoned. So we have already established the punishment for sex for an unmarried woman. If verse 28 and 29 were simply sex, then we would have contradicting rules in back to back paragraphs.

The simple reading if you take the whole paragraph is that this is a description of what you do in the case of rape for three different, common sets of circumstances. To claim otherwise is to ignore the the context. Like when discussing Bible contradictions, the common apologists tact is to claim that since each circumstance does not explicitly state rape that there is a way out but it is also the way that requires the most twisting of the words. The simple explanation is that the Bible requires unengaged women to marry their rapist and for rape victims in cities to be stoned if the perp is not caught in the act.

Toto

The concept of rape as a crime against a woman, involving forcing her to have sex against her will, is a product of the modern feminist movement. I saw this change in my lifetime.

Rape in Biblical times was a crime against the property rights that a man had in his wife or his daughter. It was a crime against purity and/or chastity. So forcing a rapist to marry his victim, and to support her and her children for the rest of her life, made some sense in the context of the time. If she hadn't been raped by this man, her father could have sold her to some other man who would have had the right to have sex with her with no regard to her consent.

Of course, we don't have any real evidence that Jews actually enforced any of these laws at any time in history.

ApostateAbe

I have likewise been suspicious of that passage being cited as evidence that the Bible supports rape, so I agree. There is still a lot of backward thinking wound up in the passages even after you properly understand them (i.e. a woman isn't raped if nobody hears her cry out).

John Kesler

I think it's telling that even the conservative NIV, in its dynamic-equivalent translation, uses "rape."

By no means does this settle the issue, but I think it's fair to say that if the translators thought a less-offensive word were appropriate, they would have used it. Also note the punishment for a similar law from Exodus 22, which I also quote from the NIV:

If we assume that this passage only concerns consensual sex, but the passage in Deuteronomy only concerns rape, then we have a conundrum: a man can be denied a woman as his wife if he only "seduces" her, but he guarantees marriage if he rapes her.

In the patriarchal society of ancient Israel, once a woman had sex with a man, she couldn't be another man's wife; either she married her partner or she didn't marry. What it appears to me is that the Deuteronomistic author has modified the law from Exodus to make it inclusive of all premarital sex, whether consensual or not, and has changed the imprecise "bride-price" to a standard fee to be paid to the girl's father. The bottom line is that ultimately, it didn't matter whether the unmarried young woman was raped or seduced; she needed someone to take care of her, and her sexual partner was the only viable candidate in that society.

Sheshbazzar

I'd tend to interpret it, as the daughter was the personal property of the father, just like his cattle, his ass, or his his house.
The ruling had nothing to do with the virgin herself,- but with the father being the victim of this rape- by deprived of a highly valued salable asset, that asset being his daughters virginity.
Her loss in the matter was of no consequence other than to herself. It was the loss of a valued financial asset and bargaining chip to the father that was the primary concern and rationale behind the law.

In primitive societies virgin daughters are commodities which men can and do use as a key in aligning themselves with a more prosperous family, giving entrance to a higher social standing, and acceptance into a 'better' placed, more elite group.

Obviously this still happens to a degree even in modern high-society, where daughters are 'encouraged' to seek their mates from wealthy, and well 'connected' families.
'Goods' that are known to be 'damaged' have a lower order of acceptance, and consequent value as bargaining chips. "She's not good enough for you!"
A 'good' marriage can potentially be worth millions in advantages to the father and his family.

The changing social mores since the sexual-revolution of the '60s, have tended to blunt our present day sensibilities as to what was previously regarded as 'proper', and to how serious of an offense it then was against the father and family to have a daughter that was publicly known to be 'ruined'.
Many times any suffering or loss incurred by the daughter herself was regarded as almost entirely irrelevant. The father's anger was in reaction to the damage to, and loss of his 'asset'.

That so many of these 'damaged' daughters were then ostracized and disowned by their families, and often resorted to self-destructive behavior or even became suicide victims, is indicative of where the value really lay.

I lived through the 50's and 60's and had a ringside seat to observe this sad shit go on right in my own family.
Daughters and women have been fucked over by society from the beginning.




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hjalti

First of all, the guy uses Strongs, so by definition, the case isn't good.

The most important aspect here is the meaning of the verb in question. If you look at how it's used in the OT (i.e. what is it to "taphas someone"?) it's clear that it's about taking someone with the use of force (it's the verb used for 'taking' prisoners in war for example). If you look at how the LXX translated this, you see that they used a verb that also connotes the use of force.

So the passage in question seems to be about rape. The 'homophobic asshole' is wrong.

The guy also seems to think that a language can only have one way of saying "rape", e.g. he points out a word that clearly means rape and since this passage doesn't use exactly that word, it can't mean rape. Well, that's just stupid. English has the word 'rape', but doesn't it have something like 'force himself on' or something (not my first language, but I think I've heard something like that).

hjalti

For those interested Thom Stark deals with this in his book-length review "Is god a moral compromiser?" (pdf), on p. 127 and forward. He lists all of the examples where someone is "tapas"-ed.

Bronzeage

This passage would have more relevance if the institution of marriage were the same today as in Old Testament times.

The point is not so much a woman would be forced to marry her rapist, but her rapist would be forced to support her for the rest of her life.

As far as I know, nothing in scripture indicates how this worked in practice.